North Korea is winning because Kim Jong-Un is playing the United States off against China

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have built to levels last seen during the Cuban Missile Crisis – the height of the Cold War. While many have been quick to blame the quixotic policymaking of President Trump, what has brought us here is North Korea’s development of a nuclear-tipped inter-continental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States.

The situation has not been helped by the fiery rhetoric used by Trump or North Korea’s leader, Kim Jung-un.

Despite their apparent domination of media headlines, the fact is that both men inherited this crisis, with the tracks being laid decades ago, in the early 1990s.

From Pyongyang’s perspective, the nineties were a nightmare. All across the world, communist regimes were collapsing under the demands for political participation and economic reform. The cutting of aid by Pyongyang's two allies, China and the USSR, coincided with a bad harvest....